On March 5th, 1987, Lisa Palmer, head of the Latin American Department
at Christie’s, wrote asking if my aunt Elena Faget Figari and myself could
please look at the enclosed photos of three paintings, each of them 70x100cm.
We approved their authenticity, and eventually she brought the paintings for
our confirmation. She came in time for lunch, show us the pictures, and I drove
her right back to the airport.

The paintings had been
handed to Christie’s, London, by a solicitor, and I don’t remember an owner
having been mentioned. Data that we couldn’t process then: the three had labels
on the back reading “El Mangrullo”, the name of the ranch of Federico Vegelius,
who had died in London earlier, where his widow still lived.

Prints of these three
paintings appear in the catalog of the Figari Show at the Musée d’Art Moderne
of Paris in 1960, as the property of Carlos María Madariaga Anchorena,rich Aregntinian.

In
successive auctions, Christi’s sold the paintings at prices between 50 and 100
thousand dollars each.

A
few years later, I asked a friend from Argentina if he knew Madariaga, he said
yes, and agreed to ask him about the paintings. The answer was that he didn’t
want to hear them mentioned.

On July 31st, 2007,
I’m consulted from Christie’s about three pictures they are being offered, and
I answer that not only they are fakes, but they themselves had sold the
originals on such and such dates. This time they had been consulted by the
heirs of Madariaga’s widow, and the solicitor and trustee wrote asking for a
confirmation, which I gave him.

It
seems evident that Madariaga had been aware of the manoeuvre, and hadn’t shared
it, at least at family level. A clipping from ACCIÓN, newspaper, of November 21st,
1968, reads:

Vegelius had copies painted of the pictures of the Uruguayan artist, and
managed to sell several fake canvases to Damiano Bendahan, Carlos María Madariaga
Anchorena, Miguel Lerman and Luis Mario Dolgotol.

I am not sure that a
sale was his M.O.: I know that in many other cases he received originals for
the Paris show, and returned copies to the owners.

Another clipping says
that a judge decreed the preventive prison of Vogelius, and embargoed him for
50 million Argentine pesos (I don’t understand how he managed to keep the
original paintings).